Psychological Fitness: Verbal abuse towards yourself is unwarranted

Oct. 11, 2013

Written by

Art Frenz

A parent with a pointed finger yells at a child in a parking lot. An adult uses put downs and insults while arguing with a spouse. A schoolyard student engages in vicious name calling of another. A red-faced employer brings an employee to tears with the sheer force of his or her angry voice. All these we can easily identify as examples of verbal abuse.

When viewed from a distance, it’s easy to recognize verbal abuse when we see it. It’s not complicated — we can readily tell that it’s disrespectful, hurtful, counter-productive and simply wrong. We want the person doing it to stop it. And we want the person doing it to cut the other person some slack, no matter what mistake he or she might have made, to demonstrate some compassion, kindness and forgiveness. Surely people can be held accountable for their mistakes without being verbally abused.

Practice what you preach

Verbal abuse is obvious when we’re observing it in others. However, often we fail to recognize when we are being verbally abusive to ourselves. We have a double standard — we think it’s wrong for others to be verbally abusive, but we believe it’s OK to do it to ourselves. We think we deserve it. We think if we’re not “hard” on ourselves that means we’re letting ourselves off the hook for our mistakes.

We call ourselves names: stupid, idiot, jerk, wimp, loser. We criticize and berate ourselves for what we feel: “What’s wrong with me?” “What is my problem?” “Why do I let this stuff get to me so much?” “When will I grow up?” We punish ourselves: “I made such a complete fool of myself, I am not going to share my feelings with anyone (or raise my hand in class, or give a presentation at work) ever again.”

Personal responsibility and accountability without abuse and punishment

We think this self abuse is warranted and productive, but neither could be further from the truth. It’s not warranted because nobody deserves to be spoken to this way, period. It is not productive because it does not change the behavior in question. A person, age 7, 17 or 72, thinks she has plenty of time to do her “homework.” She miscalculates. She messes up and misses the deadline. It’s her mistake, nobody else’s.

In order to improve, she needs to take a look at how this happened, make a careful, objective, intelligent inquiry into what she did wrong and what she needs to do differently next time. The verbal abuse puts a halt to this necessary process.

When she says, “I’m such a screw-up, I can’t get anything done on time,” the exploring stops and the opportunity for learning is over. She’d be better off saying, “I missed the deadline, again. I need to do some serious work on this time management thing.”

When we engage in abusive self talk, we are being verbally abusive to a vulnerable part of ourselves. Just because we’re doing it to ourselves does not make it OK. When angry and disappointed in yourself, make it a point to not say anything to yourself that you would not say to a young child. Instead, exercise compassion and forgiveness and then get to work on improving the behavior.

Art Frenz, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice. He can be contacted at Psychological Fitness, 1200 Monroe St., Endicott, NY, 13760.